introduction

Let me state at the outset that this work is that of a student of the biblical
text. I have no formal training in psychology or philosophy beyond the appetite for the classical wisdom of those fields that typifies many enlightened
modern readers of the Bible. As such, rest assured that I arrive at the text
with no specific psycho-literary methodology. I will not impose upon the
text a Freudian or any particular post-Freudian theory of interpretation.
In fact, there are only two litmus tests in this work for the validity of an
insight. Does the idea seem to emerge from a close reading of the text?
Does the idea resonate with a common sense, intuitive understanding of
human nature (albeit an understanding informed and enriched at times
by the insights of modern psychological sensibilities)?
For example, one should note that my use of the term repression is not
always the Freudian one that speaks of impulses suppressed by the super
ego; but almost the inverse, at times. The Genesis narratives seem to imply
at various junctures that Jacobs impulsesand his attempts to advance
a perceived divine planoften suppress his inner moral voice. Thus, by
repression I mean the relegation of something from the conscious to the
unconscious, a colloquial sense of something sent from the living room of
the mind into the cellar. I use this term without a claim as to what does
the relegating and what it is that is sent to the basement of the soul.

11

WRESTLING JACOB

There is also no attempt to impose the oedipal conflict upon the narratives. In fact, at one point it seems to be reversed as the mother Rebecca
becomes the authority figure who inadvertently complicates Jacobs path
to the much desired relationship of love with his father, Isaac.
In short, while aware of the recent proliferation of psycho-literary theories and methodologies, I have chosen to take my leadas exclusively as
possiblefrom the idiosyncrasies of the text. The limited deployment of
formal psychological categories is intended analogically, as a way of elucidating for the modern reader those insights that seem to both emerge from
the text and to resonate with common experience and intuition.
Close Reading and Characterization
One might expect a book of close readings of biblical texts to resemble
the Freudian readings of Greek myths. In that well known genre as well,
writers peruse the epic tales to cull their anthropological conceptions and
to inform our own understanding of ourselves. But as Robert Alter has
noted, biblical writing departs radically from the fixed choreography of
timeless events and moves toward the indeterminacy of ambiguities that
resemble the uncertainties of life and of history.1 For Alter and other close
readers of the Hebrew Bible, it is this shift that allows a transformation of
the narrative art from ritual rehearsal to the delineation of the wayward
paths of human freedom, the quirks and contradictions of men and women
seen as moral agents and as complex centers of motive and feeling.2
Thus, biblical heroes are very different from the epic heroes in that they
live and breathe and struggle and fail and transcend in real situations.
They instruct not in their mythic stature but in their human complexity,
not in their succumbing to or tragically resisting a fated destiny, but in
a tortuous negotiation between their flawed interiority and their divine
covenantal calling.
1 R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (NY: Basic Books, 1981) 2527.
2 Ibid.
12

INTRODUCTION

In fact, we will suggest that the book of Genesis stands in opposition

to the Greek epics in the following way as well: In the Greek epic, the
hero falters in his futile attempt to ignore the fate set for him by the gods.
By contrast, in some of the Genesis narratives, the heroes and heroines
falter in their inappropriate sacrifice of moral autonomous judgment to
the dictates of a perceived divine plan. The Greek hero is unaware of his
inescapable fate; his autonomy is an illusion. The biblical heroes are aware
of their covenantal destiny, but cannot escape their autonomy. This double
bind of moral responsibility vs. covenantal destiny is particularly evident
when biblical characters try to advance the divine objective in ways that
bypass their own integrity.
Literary approaches to the Bible have noted the crafted artistry of the
narrative mode that so resembles the modern development of narrative art.
Yet, it is also abundantly clear that the Hebrew Bible communicates its
stories using tools that are rarely used by modernsand with an economy
of description that is deceptive in its subtlety and begrudging by standards
of the modern reader.
Though Alter has led the most recent battle against anachronistic expectations of the biblical text, he is also among the most forthright of
scholars in declaring that:
Biblical narrative offers us, after all, nothing in the way of minute analysis of motive or detailed rendering of mental processes;
whatever indications we may be vouchsafed of feeling, attitude,
or intention are rather minimal; and we are given the barest hints
about the physical appearance, the tics and gestures, the dress and
implements of the characters, the material milieu in which they
enact their destinies. In short, all of the indicators of nuanced
individuality to which the Western literary tradition has accustomed us. . . would appear to be absent from the Bible.3
3 Ibid, 114.
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WRESTLING JACOB

Yet, merely because the modern literary means of denoting character

are largely absent, one is not best served by assuming the absence of characterization. The narratives of the Hebrew Bible constitute a unique literary genre with their own balanced blend of plot, character, and message.
It has long been noted that the range of meanings of these texts must be
explored with sensitivity to the subtle uses of language and style that are
peculiar to this genre. Thus, scholars have debated the relative priority of
plot, character and message in these narratives as well as their relationship
to historiography. Perhaps because of a bias of modernist expectation, many
recent exegetes, even those with a literary approach to the biblical text, have
downplayed the role of presentation and development of character.
Even some of the most keen literary readers of the Bible, like Yair Zakovitch, have suggested that the reason for the sparse information and
seeming neglect of characterization is the subordination of character to
other interests of the writer:
For the biblical narrator the portrayal of personality is never
the main theme; for the most part, the human being is a vehicle to transport the history of a nation in its relationship to its
God....4
What seems to run counter to this general statement is the extent to
which biblical heroes frequently and decidedly do not serve the thrust of
the divinely mandated destiny. On the contrary, they often seem to inhibit the divine plan, and more often than not, these characters struggle
to navigate between their own very human limitations and the prophetic
4 Y. Zakovitch, David: From Shepherd to Messiah (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Tzvi, 1995)
10 (my translation from Hebrew). This remark is particularly surprising as it appears
in the introduction to a book that is framed as a biography of a biblical character,
which is in itself a rare, nearly anomalous form of commentary.
14

INTRODUCTION

vision they are meant to advance.

In fact, it would seem that the real drama of the biblical text lay precisely in the thorny complexity of intensely human (and at times tragically
faulted) heroes functioning in the arena of morally ambiguous interaction
with friends, family and foes and simultaneously in the orbit of a divine
covenant.
Less categorical than the above statement, yet still open to critique, is the
observation of another skilled contemporary literary exegete, Uriel Simon.
He distinguishes between primary and secondary characters in biblical
narratives by suggesting that secondary characters should be defined as
those that simply serve the interests of the plot or as foils to highlight or
contrast the important traits of the primary characters.5 This claimwhile
undoubtedly accurate in many casesbecomes problematic when deployed
as a sweeping rule that supposedly obviates the need to engage so-called
secondary characters with the tools of close reading. An unfortunate example of this is Simons treatment of Isaacs return from his near sacrifice
atop Mt. Moriah. Simon claims that what seems to many readersfrom
ancient times to the presenta striking gap in the narrative of the Binding
of Isaac (Gen. 22), is no more than a classic stylistic instance of the subordination of the secondary character Isaac for the needs of the story.6
In this way, Simon does away with the need to relate literary significance
to the absence of Isaac on the return from Mount Moriah; this, despite
the repeated phrase, and the two of them walked together (referring to
Abraham and Isaac) in the verses describing their ascent to Moriah. The
fact that in the descent Isaac is absent, yet the lads who wait throughout
the drama at the foot of the mountain walk together with Abraham on
the way back, is also not deemed a sufficient literary indicator to deserve
attention in a plain sense reading. It seems that beyond subordinating
Isaac to the needs of the story as a mere secondary character in the story
5 See Uriel Simon, Kriah Sifrutit BaMikra (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1997) 320.
6 Ibid (my translation of the Hebrew).
15

WRESTLING JACOB

of the Binding of Isaac, Simon has actually sacrificed a close reading of the
character Isaac upon the altar of predefined exegetical categories.7
In the course of my own analysis of the character of Isaac, I will attempt
to show the profound significance of the absence of Isaac from the descent
from Moriah and the resonance of this gap in subsequent Isaac stories.
The late Jewish philosopher and poet, Abraham Joshua Heschel, coined
a phrase that accurately stands in opposition to the assumption that biblical characters, primary or (so-called) secondary, merely service the plot or
history for the biblical authors. Heschel claims that the Bible should be
read as divine anthropology.8
Every reading of the Bible presumes a prior conception of the nature
of the books being subject to examination. For Heschel, and I believe for
Robert Alter (though from different perspectives), the narratives of the
Bible are primarily about what it means to be human in a world confronted
by the divine call. As such, there is no more significant feature of the text
than the way its heroes and villains negotiate their destinies. Their foibles
as well as their successes are the stuff through which the text communicates its story. If we fail to perceive the subtle indicators of individuation
and the exquisite twists and turns of character development that often
lie hidden in plain sight, we do not simply fail to add a speculative
layer of overinterpretation to the history, or prophetic message, or plot.9
We risk ignoring the center stage and focus of this subtle work of divine
anthropology.
What are the subtle indicators and idiosyncratically biblical methods
for conveying motivation, attitude, feeling, and moral quandary? For as
7 In fairness to Simon, he is, in this particular case, following in the footsteps of the
12th century exegete Ibn Ezra in the latters comment on Genesis 22:19: And Isaac
was not mentioned because he is subordinate to him [Abraham].
8 Abraham J.Heschel, Man is not Alone (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976)
129.
9 For debate concerning this term, see Umberto Eco, Interpretation and
Overinterpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
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INTRODUCTION

Alter has astutely noted: The markers of individuality preeminent in the

novel, but ultimately going back to the Greek epics and romances, are
indeed mostly absent from the biblical narrative.
Before describing some of the literary tools I have employed in trying
to understand the biblical narrative technique in the Jacob stories, I want
to venture a comment on the odd convergence of two opposing agendas.
It may strike one as perverse to suggest that Jewish fundamentalist readings of the Bible and secular historical readings share the same disadvantage. Yet, experience with both biases leads one to this observation. For
many in the historical school, the literary character of biblical heroes is
subordinated to a presumption of the text as a primitive composite of
ancient traditions woven into an ideologically motivated textfraught
with scribal omissions, errors, and awkward repetitions. Needless to say,
this presumption all but precludes the possibility of viewing unusual word
choice, ellipsis, creative ambiguity and repetition as subtle and purposeful indicators of meaning. Inevitably, for this school of research, biblical
characters will also not be seen as subjects for the kind of close reading
that pays attention to slips of tongue (or quill) in their dialogue. Unusual
or anomalous language that is used to describe their actions will also not
merit the kind of interpretation that Freud applied to both speech and
behavior.
Oddly enough, the modern fundamentalist Jewish religious reading
also frequently refuses, on its own ideological grounds, to see the text as
a stylistically crafted work. For these fundamentalist readings, a divinely
written text will present heroes and heroines who transcend the possibility
of human folly. Once characters are more than human, they are also not
individuated, as their divinely imbued missions eclipse all idiosyncrasy and
make irrelevant, or inadmissible, any indications of struggle and failure.
In such a scheme, biography becomes hagiography and the subtleties of
character are once again subordinated, this time to the grand strokes of
an unambiguous divine message. For the fundamentalist reader, to speak

17

WRESTLING JACOB

of the tragic flaws of Abraham or Isaac or Jacob is tantamount to the

tarnishing of the image of the Almighty.
Moreover, when it comes to the analysis of perceived ambiguities or
repetitions in the text, all of these must be resolved as illusory; they will
not be seen as purposeful literary indicators bearing artistic value and
meaning. The result: neither the assertion of an essentially primitive historical text nor that of a divinely infallible text allow for the middle
ground of subtlety that draws its sustenance from the very same oddities
and anomalies that one school denies and the other takes as scribal error
or shoddy redaction.
On Anomalous Language or Slips of Quill
Classic biblical commentaries have always focused on puzzling grammatical and syntactical constructions as well as deciphering and analyzing
odd or anomalous word choice. Most often, the thrust of the comment
on any difficult word or phrase is to solve the problem by explaining
why, upon deeper reflection and in comparison to other biblical uses of
the term, the words are indeed the right ones to have been written. Bible
critics, focusing on the same phenomena, often suggest that the words may
in fact be the wrong ones and then proceed to suggest textual emendations that are often speculative as to what the original uncorrupted text
might have been.10
10 Clearly, much of the literature regarding textual emendation is well grounded
in ancient manuscripts such as the Samaritan Torah and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yet,
the analysis of the masoretic text as is, need not be entirely replaced by a preferred
reading of a variant text. See the commentary to the Torah of N.H. Tur-Sinai,
Peshuto Shel Mikra, for an extreme example of a modern Jewish commentary that
consists almost entirely of resolution of textual difficulties through emendation.
Notwithstanding the principle adopted by many scholars of lectio difficiliorthat
argues that the more difficult reading is paradoxically, most often the authentic
readingthe urge to emend in order to read more plainly persists unabated and
remains typical of many exegetes. (See also the fascinating work of Timpanaro, The
Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Analysis, 1974which argues against
18

INTRODUCTION

I would propose a third approach that if applied judiciously may bear

surprisingly fruitful exegesis. Let us assume that the text should be read
as is. I mean this in two ways. On one level, let us not solve the difficult
language by emending it. But let us also not rush in to resolve the difficulty
by suggesting how we might understand the words to be the right ones.
Instead, let us don the mantle of Freudian interpretation of language and
resist solving or correcting the language. We will, rather, embrace the difficulty as reflecting a subtext of meaning and as an opportunity for deeper
revelation of the full literary payload.
To put it directly, I am suggesting that the relationship of text to subtext
is best explored when there are rough readings, non-sequiturs, anomalous
word choices, ungrammaticalities and jumbled syntax. By smoothing over
the bumps and removing the obstacles, we provide an easier ride but risk
overlooking a rich landscape of subtext that lurks beneath the surface and
is often hidden between the lines.
Many will readily identify this method of close reading with that of
the classic, Rabbinic midrash as explained by Daniel Boyarin, wherein
the semiotic claim (not just the theological one) is that if God is the implied author of the Bible, then the gaps, repetitions, contradictions, and
heterogeneity of the biblical text must be read....11
I want to claim, however, that in a literary close reading that follows the
lead of Freudian interpretation of language, the subtexts are implicit within
the language of the text itself. These subtexts, can be excavated without
resort to the importing of external gap filling and artificial resolution that
often typify the midrashic reading. Indeed, if the distinction between the
plain sense reading (pshat) and the midrashic one is that between reading
into a text and reading out of a text, one would be justified in deeming
lectio difficilior and suggests a more prevalent form of accidental scribal error that
he calls banalization.)
11 Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Indiana Univ. Press,
1990) 40.
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WRESTLING JACOB

these close readings literary pshat, to borrow a phrase from Uriel Simon.12
Ultimately, whether the claim of implicit subtext to any given verse will be
judged as a literary reading, as creative midrash, or (in the least charitable
view) as overinterpretation, will depend on the resonance of the subtext
with the literary whole and upon the further contextual indications of
such subtext.
While the distance between a psychological close reading and the midrashic method is largely a matter of the degree of contextual support, it
should be clear that the method of classic medieval Jewish commentaries stands in opposition to the Freudian agenda of embracing difficult
language.
In a conversation with the late Nehama Leibowitz,13 I asked for her
understanding as to why the classic commentaries of Rashi, Nachmanides,
and others generally satisfy their agenda with the resolution of textual difficulties. Except in the case of apparent redundancies, they rarely proceed
to address the question of why the difficulty was in the text to begin with.
Her response was that Rashi and his successors viewed these difficulties
as arising only by virtue of the readers inadequacy, and not as a result of
a purposeful ambiguity or anomaly in the text itself. She added for good
measure that even in her own writings, wherein she made it second nature
for modern students to ask what is difficult in the verse for Rashi? what
was meant was not the need to find an inherent difficulty but rather to
locate the appearance of difficulty addressed by the commentary. We
proceeded to discuss various verses in which Leibowitz had herself pointed
to the artistic use of ambiguous pronouns in the biblical text. As a result,
12 Readers will judge whether I have borrowed the phrase literary pshat or hijacked
it. (Certainly, in his own commentary, Simon employs his own sense of literary pshat
in a much more restricted and cautious manner.)
13 My revered mentor, Prof. Nehama Leibowitz, is best known for her five volumes
of Studies of the Five Books of Moses, published by the Torah Education Dept. of the
World Zionist Organization. Her expertise was the analysis of the methodologies
of the classic medieval commentaries, particularly Rashi.
20

INTRODUCTION

she softened her stance, but maintained nonetheless that the reason for
the silence of the various medieval exegetes (concerning the underlying
motivation for textual difficulty) was their presumption of a plain speaking, infallible, divine text. This conception, for the most part, ruled out
the possibility of looking for purposeful anomaly and ambiguity.
In contrast, the method of exegesis employed in this work regards textual difficulty as inherent in the text and as a primary indicator of latent
meaning.
Certainly, there is by now a small library of literary criticism that discusses the correlation of exegetical examination of subtext and the Freudian analysis of the subconscious. Susan Handelman, in her seminal work
on the emergence of rabbinic interpretation in modern literary theory,
has traced the connection between the Rabbinic understanding of latent
and manifest content of holy texts, and Freuds understanding of the latent
and manifest content of dreams.14 In fact, Freud himself remarked that
in his interpretation of dreamsas in that of parapraxis (the Freudian
slip): we have treated as Holy Writ what previous writers have regarded
as an arbitrary improvisation, hurriedly patched together in the embarrassment of the moment.15 As Handelman notes, For Freud, what looked
illogical was only so (as in the case of the written Torah) because the text
is truncated, lacunary, but nothing in it is arbitrary, senseless, or out of
place. . . .16
Avivah Zornberg was correct, as well, in pointing out that the midrashic search for multiple levels of meaning is in effect an attempt to
retrieve unconscious layers of truth. She is also justified in stating that
the psychoanalytic project, like the midrashic one, represents a dissatisfaction with surface meanings, and a confidence that rich if disturbing
14 Susan Handelman, The Slayers of Moses (Albany: SUNY Press, 1982).
15 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (New York: Avon, reprinted 1965)
552.
16 Handelman, 148.
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WRESTLING JACOB

lodes seam the earths depths.17

Yet my contention is that the surface ripples that run through the Biblewhen its passages are subjected to tight contextual analysisdo more
than merely point to the possibility of midrash. The textual quirks that
midrashic writings often exploit for the purpose of an impressionistic expansion of the text can also provide the stuff of close reading and philological micro-surgery. While the midrashic approach is also ultimately based
on the indication of subtexts within the text itself, I hope to demonstrate
throughout the book a different interpretive stance that consistently sees
textual anomaly as indicative of subtext, and subtext as often indicative of
internal motivation. Moreover, that motivation is sometimes portrayed as
unknown or unconscious on the part of the main characters. This is what
is meant by my claim of subtext as subconscious.
Subtext and Subconscious
There is need to further clarify the suggestion of subtext as subconscious,
lest it be misunderstood as shifting the focus of relationship between text
and commentary. We do not mean to say that the exegete should stand
above the text and presume to understand latent strata of the written medium that remain hidden from the authorial voice. We are not speaking
of the classic Freudian mode of interpretation wherein layers of meaning
become known even to the author only through the analysis of an outside
ear that listens to that voice and pays special attention to the peculiarities
that riddle it (and sometimes make it into riddle.) While this may constitute an appropriate and worthwhile approach for much of literature, we
do not propose that this characterize our reading of the Bible.
Even putting aside the issue of divine or prophetic authorship, I part
ways with certain psychoanalytic readings of the biblical text when they
begin to presume an understanding of authorial intent, or authorial subconscious bias. For me, as well as for the traditional classic commentaries
17 Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture (NY: Doubleday, 2001) 67.
22

INTRODUCTION

of Rashi, Nachmanides on the one hand and for secular literary readings
like those of Robert Alter on the other, the text becomes either sacred or
sacrosanct in that we accept it as it is. The text speaks, not the author, and
the way the text speaks is through the mutual communicative process of
conversation between the written word and the investigative reader. This
is the stance of the Talmudic generations that use phrases like hakatuv
omer, scripture speaks, and this is the stance of the most sensitive secular
literary readers of the Bible, who humbly accept the integrity of the text
while freely and fully interpreting its literary complexity.
In this regard, one should consider the remarkable allegorical passage
in the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Menachot 29b), in which Moses has
ascended Mt. Sinai only to discover that God is not quite ready to deliver
the Torah. He is busy attaching crowns to the tops of the letters of the Torah that will only be interpreted generations hence by Rabbi Akiba. These
crowns remain incomprehensible to Moses himself. In the introduction
to his legal responsa, the late Rabbi Moses Feinstein, preeminent decisor
of Jewish law in the latter half of the last century, offers a surprisingly
postmodern (yet quintessentially Rabbinic) explanation of the passage. For
Feinstein, the crowns on the letters represent sovereignty, and God himself
in this midrashic allegoryby crowning the lettersgrants sovereignty
to the text to speak in ways that will be understood differently in each
generation, and in different ways than those intended by God himself as
author. Thus, even in traditional rabbinic discourse, authorial voice and
intent become muted and irrelevant before the sovereignty of the text and
the dynamics of its dialogue with the readers of subsequent generations.
(Even with regard to an author with a well known biography, one would
be on shaky and less fertile ground in looking at his life and times and his
idiosyncratic biases to illuminate his writing, rather than looking at his
writing in order to understand the writing. How much more apt is this
limitation when applied to the biblical text whose authorship will always
remain shrouded in either the ambiguities of ancient history or the mys-

23

WRESTLING JACOB

terium tremendum of the prophetic medium.)

Having said this, what is meant by subtext reflecting subconscious is the
analysis of the texts rough edges as subtexts that reflect the motivations
of biblical characters and the ironies of the narrative.
We will find ample evidence of the subtle use of unexpected or wrong
language to indicate what may be the hidden motivations of our biblical
heroes and villains, just as the use of odd language that is borrowed from
other biblical texts is often used to communicate the latent layer of meaning through an artistically intentional use of intertextual reference.18 Let
me illustrate both these psycho-literary phenomena with an example not
taken from passages dwelt upon in the book.
In the second chapter of the book of Job, after the hero has suffered the
loss of his children and the destruction of his house, he is smitten with
boils from head to toe and sits amidst the ashes, scratching his flesh with a
shard of clay. All of this, of course, has befallen him as part of Gods wager
with Satan that the well-blessed Job would continue to be a righteous man
and at the very least would not curse God, even in the face of disaster. At
this point, the friends of Job enter the story as they have gathered to come
to Job to console him:

18 George Savran has distinguished between two different usages of the term
intertextuality in literary analysis: In the broadest sense, the expression
intertextuality implies a general recognition that every text is constrained by the
literary system of which it is a part, and that every text is ultimately dialogical in
that it cannot but record the traces of its contentions and doubling of its earlier
discourses (D. Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, Indiana U.
Press, 1990, p. 14). But the term also has a more limited significance. . . namely, an
examination of the interaction between the specific text which is the object of study,
and one or more additional textsthe intertext. G. Savran in Journal for the Study
of the Old Testament 64 (1994) 36. Also see Savrans note 12 there, which refers to
theoretical literature on intertextuality. It is the narrower use of the term that is
employed in Savrans article there (Intertextuality, Baalams Ass and the Garden of
Eden), and it is this same use of the term that I employ in the following chapters.
24

INTRODUCTION

And they lifted their eyes from afar and did not recognize him.
And they raised their voices and they cried. And they tore each
one his cloak, and they threw dust upon their heads heavenward.
They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights
and did not speak a word to him for they saw that his pain was
great.
The description of the behavior of Jobs friends is anomalous and requires explanation. In nearly all other biblical descriptions of grief or
consolation, the expressions of empathy or mourning are fewer.19 Only
here do we find raised voices in crying, rending of garments, dust upon
the head, sitting on the ground and prolonged silence all in one passage.
Furthermore, in all other cases of dust upon the head as expression of
mourning, the dust is placed upon the headnever thrown and certainly
not thrown heavenward! The exaggerated description may be taken as
simply reflecting the exaggerated circumstances of Jobs misfortune or
alternatively as reflecting an ironic use of hyperbole. Support for the latter
interpretation comes from an unexpected coincidence of phrasing between
this passage and the words used to describe one of the ten plagues in the
ninth chapter of Exodus, verses 810:
Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: Take you handfuls of
soot of the kiln and have Moses throw it heavenward. . . and it shall
become upon the humans and the beasts as boils. . . and Moses
threw it heavenward and it became boils. . . .
The intertextual reference in Job to the prior, well-known passage in Exodus creates literary superimposition of one text upon the other; its anoma19 The sole exception seems to be the passage in Ezekiel 27:3032, though the context
there is not a narrative of actual suffering and grief, but rather a dire prophecy of
woe that is to befall a foreign city.
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WRESTLING JACOB

lous phrasing creates a subtext of meaning that must be analyzed.20

Why would the author of Job send us running to Exodus, associating
an act of throwing dust heavenward as consolation for boils (and other
emotional grief) with an act of throwing ashes heavenward that actually
produces a plague of boils? It would seem that the explanation lies in a
broader contextual look at the relationship between Job and his friends as
expressed in the next forty chapters of the book. Though apparently well
intentioned, the friends are constantly causing further grief to the suffering Job by telling him that the painful existential problem confronted,
namely the theodicy of the suffering of the righteous, need not cause him
additional pain. For them, the suffering can be explained either by redefining the status of Job as less than righteous or by redefining his suffering as
kindness that cannot be discerned from a limited human perspective. It is
apparently because of these insensitive and misguided assertions that the
friends of Job are admonished by God at the end of the book.21
There could be no better way of foreshadowing the well intentioned but
egregiously insensitive way in which the friends very attempts at comforting Job, in fact, bring him further pain, than by telling of an initial act of
consolation that also bears the irony of conflict between intent and effect.
Through the similarity of language that points to a superimposition of one
text upon the other, the friends act of consolation for Jobs boils refers us
back to another passage in which the same act actually inflicts the very
same affliction of boils.
One might suggest as well that the exaggerated number of expressions
20 Meir Weiss, in his wonderful essay, The Beginning of the Book of Job (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 1983) 76, notes the intertextuality here, but disappointingly attributes
the phenomenon to an ancient superstition that if a certain symbolic action can
precipitate a negative resulta parallel or identical action may be capable of reversing
the effect. For Weiss, then, the friends may be acting symbolically to relieve Jobs
boils by resorting to the same action that once brought boils upon others.
21 See Job 42:78. Also see the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Bava Metzia 58b that
brings the case of Jobs friends as the epitome of insensitive discourse that is culpable
for the pain it inflicts.
26

INTRODUCTION

of empathy as well as the hyperbolically charged throwing dust heavenward also reflect the friends subconscious resentment of Jobs prior life
of unmitigated wealth, reputation, religiosity, and family harmony. Could
it be that on the level of conscious communication they are expressing
empathy with his predicament, but subconsciously there is a measure of
satisfaction with the burst bubble of Jobs fairy-tale perfection?
We all certainly recognize the prevalent if unbecoming tendency of
Schadenfreude, of feeling some small degree of satisfaction when the overly
fortunate suffer misfortune. In the exaggeration, then, as well as in the
intertextual reference, we find literary indicators of a subtext that deepens
character portrayal by pointing to unconscious motivation.
On the level of surface communication between the friends and Job,
what is happening is empathy and consolation. On the level of communication between the writer and the reader, it is precisely the rough edges
of the text: the unconventional descriptive hyperbole, the odd choice of
phrasing, and the importing and superimposing of another textthat
enriches our characterization of these characters and our understanding
of their relationship to each other. It is as if the writer speaks through the
characters, yet (over their heads) directly to the reader with both a wink
and with arrows pointing to parallel texts and to subtexts.
Through this example, we also mean to stress that in this mode of
interpretation, the subconscious level revealed by the subtext is that of
the portrayed literary character; it is not the presumed subconscious of
the author.
A Word about Close Reading, Overinterpretation,
and Bean Counting
One persons close reading is anothers overinterpretation. This comment on the subjectivity inherent in all text interpretation is not to be
seen as pertaining to the debate between pragmatists like Rorty (who see
all interpretation as use of texts) and the essentialists. The subjectivity

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we address should be associated with the approach of Umberto Eco and

others who still believe that one can make distinctions between reading out
of a text that which is potentially there and reading into a text something
clearly external to it.22
While still far from the presumptuous posture of those who claim to
have captured the meaning of a biblical passage, I do believe that one can
still make the old distinctions between what the rabbinic tradition called
peshat and that which they refer to as derash. One can still talk of various
meanings of the text and not merely of uses. This brings me to an attempt
to define what it is that guided me in these close readings, and why I often
resort to what some readers might see as bean counting (when I provide statistical backing to the claim of the use of rare or anomalous wording).
If one is to claim that there is such a thing as artistic use of wrong
wording or anomaly in a text, there must also be an inherent assumption
as to the coherence or incoherence of that text. If attributing significance
to what one perceives as anomalous in a verse will be more than a manipulative use of the text, one must be able to show by some quantitative
measure that the wording is unusual in biblical usage. This is why I will
often provide statistical backing to assertions that a phrase or word is being
used in ways that are either unique or atypical in biblical writings.
Rather than reflecting a pedantic penchant for bean counting, these
numbers provide the only possible support to the concept of a feigned slip
of tongue or quill. Even the Viennese master would be hard pressed to
grant significance to a man referring to his father as farther if the local
dialect contained thirty percent of the population who would respond
ingenuously to Freud, saying: stop borthering us about this; we all have
perfectly fine farthers.

22 See note 9 and Ecos exchange of articles with Rorty in his book.
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INTRODUCTION

A Serious Word About Wordplay and the Idiosyncrasies of Orality

In some sections of this book, I employ a frequently neglected tool of
literary analysis that is based on phonetic similarities between words as well
as other forms of wordplay. We will contend that seeing these phenomena
as purposeful (and artistic) writing is more than fanciful and should be
taken quite seriously by close readers of the text. Support for this contention may be found in two contextual observations: the onebased on the
density or prevalence of such wordplay (in the particular passages under
scrutiny) compared to the less frequent use of word play in the rest of
biblical writing; the other is based on a general observation that biblical
style owes much of its peculiarity to the oral-aural nature of the written
word that typifies the ancient Near East.
When one passage contains a verse that reads in the Hebrew, hagida na
shemekha (pray tell me your name Gen. 32:3032) and three verses later
the unique phrase gid hanashe appears with what seems at first glance
to be a totally disconnected meaning of dislocated sinew [of the thigh],
one is justified in noting phonetic wordplay. Moreover, when in the same
passage, several other phonetic sound-alikes and anagrams appear with
a density that is highly unusual if not unique in the Bible, one is justified
in moving past the mere noting of the phonetics to an attempt to explain
what seems to be a conscious and artful use of it.
Though Genesis Chapter 32 has a particular literary reason to turn
words inside out (as it is about wrestling and about the turning inside
into outside of a biblical protagonist), it is also the case that the sounds of
words, their musicality, and their phonetic resonance is a much overlooked
aspect of biblical writing in general.
The modern rediscovery of the centrality of the dominant medium
for any given cultural context has produced a rich literature in which
McLuhan and his disciples and colleagues are but a notable few. Surely,
one must attribute significance to the fact that historically the Hebrew
biblical texts were written in an era in which all writings were experienced

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by their mass audiences exclusively through the aural sense. In fact, as

long as written media were scrolls and early codicesas opposed to the
mass-produced books of the print eravisual contact with this extraordinarily expensive medium remained inaccessible to any common person
(as opposed to royalty, wealthy nobility and clergy). One can assume that
the Bible was written for the entire people to study and live by its word
(as is indicated by many internal passages). It is therefore apparent that
the ancient scriptures were written primarily to be heard.
It is in this context that we may explain various attributes of the Hebrew language and of biblical style that are so foreign to the parochial
understanding of moderns. Ancient Hebrew script has no vowels, they
are provided vocally by the reader. When the ninth and tenth century
Masoretes of Tiberius attached vowels and punctuation to the texts, it
is of note that the same punctuation markings also serve as musical or
cantillation signals.
Moreover, the phenomenon of the prevalent artistic use of repetition
(and the subtle creation of expectation and the resulting nuance and surprise that ensue) is also directly related to the orality of ancient Hebrew
scripture. The closest we moderns can come to an appreciation of a medium
of writing that is experienced through the ear is to compare that writing
to our experience of music. Just as musical meaning is conveyed through
themes and variations on those themes, there is a musicality in the ancient
written Hebrew that promotes the extensive and finely tuned use of repetition. I have found this to be true on many levels and have seen it manifest
in a variety of artistic modes of repetition in the Bible.
These include: the repetition of verbatim phrases, in what Alter calls
type-scenes, in what Buber and Rosenszeig called the repeated guiding
word or leitwort (similar to the musical term, leitmotif), in the doubling
and tripling of separate episodes, in the reporting of the same event
through the slight variation of various perspectives, and in the pervasive
use of parallelism in prose as well as poetry.

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INTRODUCTION

It is thus also probable that the use of phonetic wordplay, when evidenced in a given verse or section, is also a natural product and vehicle
for the conveying of meaning or associative connection as well as for the
evoking of pleasure, irony, surprise and a broad range of literary effect.
In short, what might be regarded as a fanciful conjecture as to the
meaning of phonetic word play in modern writing, might be elevated to
the status of close reading when the subject of analysis is the ancient era of
musical writing for the ear.
Ultimately, the status of any suggestion that attributes meaning to
wordplay, as is the case in any form of close reading, will be entirely dependent on the resonance and coherence of those suggestions with the
specific context and with the literary work as a whole.
One more word about wordplay: Though a particular suggestion of
artistic use of wordplay may find support in the common etymological
history of two similar words, in no way is the historical commonality
of word origin a sine qua non for the claim of interterxtual reference, or
of words at play with each other. Derrida has called this kind of literary
puns syllepsis, a term that was previously used to denote a larger category
of any word understood two different ways at once. In literary thought,
words are taken as symbols with an indeterminate range of meaning and
association. Then, along come context, syntax and grammar, and they
constrict the readers choice among the competing meanings. However,
larger contexts of literary associationfor instance, the other chapters of
the same book or other books in the same canonreintroduce additional
meanings into the legitimate range of significance for the reader when the
similarity between two words or phrases is unusual or striking. The probability increases that a word is being used to connote as well as to denote,
when the word in context is anomalous, uncommon, or ungrammatical.
To quote the critic, Michael Riffaterre:

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As I see it, ambiguity exemplifies the idiolectic ungrammaticalities that warn the reader of latent intertext.23
He goes on to speak of the duality of a texts message, its semantic and
its semiotic faces. Riffaterre defines this phenomenon in the following
way:
. . . syllepsis consists in the understanding of the same word in two
different ways at once, as contextual meaning and as intertextual
meaning. The contextual meaning is that demanded by the words
grammatical collocations, by the words reference to other words
in the text. The intertextual meaning is another meaning the
word may possibly have, one of its dictionary meanings and/or
one actualized within an intertext. In either case, this intertextual
meaning is incompatible with the context and pointless within
the text, but it still operates as a second referencethis one to
the intertext. The second reference serves as a model for reading
significance into the text. . . or as an index to the significance of
straddling two texts.24
In any case, the use of wordplay as syllepsisand as indicating the superimposition of one texts context upon the otherfalls within a literary program that exists outside the boundaries of etymological analysis (though
the latter may at times bolster the assertion of conscious wordplay).

23 M. Riffaterre, Syllespsis in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 6, Number 4 (Chicago: Univ.

of Chicago, 1980) 628.
24 Ibid., 6378. (Also quoted in George Savran, Beastly Speech: Intertextuality,
Baalams Ass and the Garden of Eden in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
64 (1994).
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INTRODUCTION

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Repetition is one of the defining characteristics of biblical writing. Bible
critics have based much of their documentary theory of multiple authors
on the prevalence of repeated action, the doubling of episodes, and the
appearance of nearly identical yet distinct passages. Echoing ancient Rabbinic exegesis and some medieval commentaries, modern literary exegetes
have more recently argued that repetitions should be seen as literary tools
that create themes and then proceed to produce nuance and complexity
by providing variations on those themes. As noted, this is accomplished
in much the same way that a musical composition works a theme to foster
meaning.
But repetition is also one of the defining characteristics of inner compulsion (i.e., neurotic behavior) in psychoanalytic thinking. In the relentless
effort to discover coherence in irrationality, the psychoanalytic lens is always on the lookout for patterns of behavior that reveal themselves through
repetition. Even in the untrained intuitive observations of the layman, one
often hears phrases like I dont know why I always seem to. . . . In this
sense, repetition constitutes an unconscious need to work out unresolved
issues, a need to redo that which was done poorly or incompletely.
There is yet an additional mode of repetition, closely related to the
above, in which the reenacting of prior patterns can be redemptive. When
repetition as reenacting is controlled and manipulated in the therapeutic
context, it can also be the key to cathartic breakthrough. It is repetition
artificially produced that allows compulsive behavior to free itself, by
playing out the compulsive pattern before a mirror of self-reflection (the
therapist)thereby connecting the prior short circuit between unrecognized, unconscious motivations and heretofore inexplicable and often
self-destructive behavior.
Philip Rieff, in describing Freuds understanding of the role of transference in therapy, had this to say about the emancipative power of repetition
and of transference:

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Self-consciousness, to emancipate, needs another self, a sympathetic audience before which the unacted part of life can at last
be acted out.25
To cure or curb the compulsion to repeat unhealthy emotional patterns,
one grants the compulsion the right to assert itself in the controlled
playground of transference.
The story of Jacob, similar to many other complex biblical narratives, is
fraught with repetitions, cycles, and patterns of action and reaction. In our
case, the hero repeatedly resorts to dubious means to achieve that which
might have come his way without the subterfuge. At several junctures,
Jacobs actions are perceived by his rivals as duplicitous and as a result, his
initial goals recede even further from realization. Such a pattern occurs
with the lentil soup for birthright barter, with the impersonation of
Esau, and again with the speckled and spotted sheep arrangement with
Laban. Are these to be understood purely as literary manipulationsthere
to entice the reader with the expectations created by thematic similarity
and to surprise the reader with the variations on those themes that create nuance and depth? If it were so, this would be sufficient to warrant a
sensitive reading of these passages as sophisticated literary art.
Nonetheless, the question that a psychologically oriented reader might
ask is the following: Is the pattern just a result of the constrictions of
behavior artificially imposed by the author upon the storys plot? Or is
it the product of a much more subtle, inner compulsion that, in turn,
derives from the uniqueness and psychological coherence of the literary
character?
Indeed, we propose to explore this second possibility, namely, that the
repetitions and patterns represent inner compulsions that are an essential
part of developing Jacobs character as he struggles for autonomy and
25 Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1979)
169170.
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redemption. One of the literary phenomena that particularly astonished

me as I moved through the Jacob stories with this perspective, was the
following literary sequence: At the culmination of a repeated pattern of irrationally self-destructive manipulations, we find the previous scenes quite
literally reproduced in the scene at the Jabok crossing. There, a symbolically
instructive encounter occurs with a wrestling angelic figure playing the role
of a divine therapist. It is there that a controlled playground is provided
in which Jacob can replay the prior moments with previously repressed
awareness. It is there that he will achieve some integration (integrity?)
of identity. The wrestling angel (of Genesis 32) not only renames Jacob,
he also reframes his prior pattern of behavior. We shall see as well in our
final essay that Moses too is confronted with a threatening divine messenger (Ex. 4) in a scene that contains idiosyncratic echoes of the prior
scene with Jacob. There too, the scene is about Moses internal struggle
with his own compulsions that threaten to inhibit his ability to function
as Gods messenger.
I was surprised and gratified to find in these biblical narratives an artful
use of repetition that approximates the psychological conception of repetition as unconscious reworking/compulsion as well as that of artificial
reenactment functioning as therapeutic catharsis.
One of the defining characteristics of the narratives of the Hebrew Bible
is its unflinchingly honest portrayal of its heroes as flawed, complex, and
utterly human. At the same time, it is clear from the general framing of
these narratives that they are not intended as phenomenological sketches,
as slice of life portrayals devoid of ultimate mythic significance. The Bible
decidedly does not conform to the schematic morality tales of contrived
simplicity nor does it conform to the genre of ancient tales of heroism
devoid of moral voice or theological pretension.
It therefore seems essential to inquire as to the implied lesson or purpose
in describing the struggles, failings, conquests, and repeated failings of
these protagonists. If the moral lessons of simply what to do and what not

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to do, or the record of interaction between human foible and divine plan
were the sum total of the literary program, the repetitions and psychological complexity of the characters would seem at worsta distraction,
and at besta literary embellishment. Yet, close readings of these stories
betray increasingly intricate layers of artistic subtlety and purpose. Thus,
it seems likely that the process itself of repeated struggle and failure, of
empowerment and retreat, of self-estrangement and self-recognition, may
just comprise a main thrust of this divine anthropology.
A Word About the Question of Human Autonomy
and Divine Authority
Ultimately, the questions raised here reverberate beyond the pages of
the Bible and beyond the confines of any particular reading of Scripture.
For any religious system of thought, one of the most central questions to
be addressed will be: Can one develop an internalized, autonomous, moral
compass and simultaneously, a deeply felt sense that ones own life and the
grand scheme of history are guided by a transcendental, infinite force?
Philosophical religious literature of both rational and mystical orientation
grapples with this tension in proposing various theories of the parameters
of divine providence and the scope of human free will. On the surface, the
Hebrew Bible, in constructing an intricate and pervasive set of commandments and prophecies, has reduced the concern for human autonomy in
deference to the call for submission to an external higher calling.
Debate persists on the extent of true autonomy or freedom for the
individual. It is a common assumption that the ancients perceived ones
life as circumscribed by the grand forces of nature and of the gods or God,
whereas the moderns have shifted the focus to ones internal battle with
the determinism of nature and nurture. However, I believe the Jacob stories, like much of the Hebrew Bible, bear strong evidence of a very early
understanding of the powerful effects of internal circumscriptions or
what we today would call neuroses. The struggles described in the book

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INTRODUCTION

of Genesis are not primarily the struggles between kings and prophets,
between nations, or even between brothers. They are, for the most part,
the internal struggles of human beings to create destiny out of fate and
to achieve an identity that is profoundly human, while at the same time,
moving in harmony with and in pursuit of a divine vision or mandate.
The idea of the fulfillment of divine promise through human struggle,
indeed, the very biblical idea of transcendence through actualization
of the divine image within us, is a very tricky business. Can a human
being transcend or even aspire to the divine without first being a fully
autonomous person?
In C.S. Lewis classic book, The Screwtape Letters, in which the veteran
devil instructs his apprentice on the workings of our father below (Satan)
and that of the Enemy (God), the devil argues the following:
To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of
its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its
expense. But the obedience which the Enemy [God] demands is
quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk
about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom,
is not. . . mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does
want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of
himself creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be
qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but
because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can
finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become
sons. We want to suck in; He wants to give out. . . . Our war aim
is a world in which our Father below has drawn all other beings
into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to
Him but distinct.26

26 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (London: The Guardian, 1961) Letter 8.
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In his inimitably entertaining way, Lewis has made a most crucial

distinction, and it is precisely with regard to this issue that the modern
secularist view (as well as some religious fundamentalist views) got the
Bible all wrong. In post-Freudian Western thought there is a bias toward
religion in general and to the Hebrew Bible specifically that portrays them
as conflicting with a humanistic vision of empowerment and autonomy.
The idea of a deity conferring blessings and curses, issuing commands,
and prefiguring history through prophetic visions, is seen as constricting
the moral independence and powerful sense of self-mastery necessary for
human fulfillment.
A close reading of various biblical texts, however, may reveal that the
more dominant theme in the Hebrew Bible is that of a divinely inspired
human autonomy and of an uncompromising demand from on high for
human accountability. Ultimately, it is an invitation to mere mortals
to transcend their self-imposed limits, to develop their innate divine image, to struggle with themselves, and even to struggle with God. . . and
to prevail.27
If a similarity between the psychoanalytic enterprise and the biblical
narratives emerges from the texts themselves, it would seem to be found
in the biblical heros struggle to achieve identity and autonomy. This seems
to occur, much as in the therapeutic model, by courageously confronting
our own masquerades and evasions.
Moreover, what frankly came as a surprise to mein the process of these
close readings of the Jacob storieswas the extent to which the struggle for
human autonomy could be traced precisely by reading between the lines,
by noting trauma, resistance, cognitive dissonance, and repression, and by
discerning compulsive repetition, slips of tongue, dreams as expressions of
the unconscious, and the therapeutic effect of transference.
In short, the text itself describes the struggle for wholeness as being
advanced (though not achieved) through a process remarkably similar to
27 Gen. 32:29.
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the essential dialectics of psychoanalysis.

If we are to learn about ourselves and are meant to read these tales of
struggling with God and men as mirroring the struggle to become fully
human and even to transcend our own humanity, then the narratives must,
in turn, mirror the most subtle paradox of what it means to be inescapably
human, yet endowed with the capacity for transcendence.
The successive chapters will deal with the internal struggles of biblical
heroes: Isaac, Rebecca and Jacob, and Moses and Baalam. Their lives have
been altered and challenged by a divine call and a covenantal destiny. They
can no longer live simply on the plane of human action and reaction. Yet
conversely, the biblical narrative does not exempt them from the consequences of their own motivations and moral decisions; they can deny or
ignore neither their responsibility for their own lives nor their role in
advancing or inhibiting the divine scheme.
Because of the nature of biblical narrative that consists of action and
dialogue to the near exclusion of complex descriptive passages, the subtle
indicators of internal struggle and psychological complexity in biblical
protagonists can only be unpacked by means of close philological and
literary analysis.
The following essays will employ the classical tools of paying close attention to anomalous language, grammar, syntax and sequence in the
original biblical Hebrew. We will be especially attentive to the literary use
of intertextuality, in which borrowed phrases or constructs of plot are
imported from text to text in order to point to the superimposition of one
story upon the other. At the same time, we suggest that the relationship
between text and subtext often mirrors the interplay of the conscious and
the subconscious of biblical characters.

39